Groggy as hell today. Could not sleep but got to sleep after a shot of the vodak. Have not had to do that for a long time. then woke up kinda early. Might not last long tonight, friend is coming over just to hang out. Did nothing useful today except poke around the NYPL site and conclude that no index of the NY Post before 2000 seems to exist. That is stupid, and a little hard to believe if true. The NYPL website is a mess of broken links and “ACCESS FORBIDDEN” messages.
Thinking today how I’ve never adjusted to how text rises when you are in a chat room, but it falls when you are typing normally as I am now. It’s a subtle but significant influence over how you perceive the text — floating up from the bottom or accumulating from the top of the screen. Nothing useful for the book outline, though.
Blizzard of e-mails from high school alumni in advance of the 30th reunion coming up this summer. Almost no way would I go but I don’t mind being on the email discussion list. It’s interesting to see these names from before email was in my life with @s after them. The people leading the discussion about the reunion were all the people I had nothing to do with and who thought I was a loser. Some of these guys go back to grade 3 for me, and among those folks some have been friends since Kindergarten. most never left Tampa, and as far as I can tell they’ve gone on to honorable if slightly predictable careers as lawyers, bankers, and insurance salesmen.
I think the only reason I am on the email list is because some years ago I emailed the guy who now appears to be the lead organizer of this reunion. I emailed to ask him if he knew anything about the circumstances of a fellow alumni’s death. He was at the funeral and had heard it was a heart attack but did not know that conclusively. He must have added me to his alumni address book. A lot of names are not on the list, and I have no intention of answering the call for addresses of people whose names are not present. My actual name does not even appear, only the email address, which makes me wonder if anyone would notice my name if they saw it, and even remember who I am.
I remember Bill Clinton going to his 30th HS reunion, thinking that has to be every high school graduates wet dream to go to their class reunion as President of the United States.
The emails today started with a picture from 1985 or 1986 of some of the cool kids, followed by dozen or so in-jokes from those people and others I hardly knew. One guy I knew from 3rd grade on actually seems cool enough. I did go to the… I guess it was the 10th reunion, with Pete. It was not awful but it was awkward as the attention all seemed to focus on athletes. That one guy I thought seemed cool enough came up to me and asked if I was still writing. I did not remember who he was or why he was asking me this. He really looked different just 10 years on. Eventually I realized he was one of the very rich kids whose last name graced one of the big athletic buildings. His father donated a bunch of money.
Remembering a grade school teacher who got fired because the bosses said she favored the athletes. She totally did favor the jocks and she knew it. Yet somehow, 30 years later, the school awarded those very athletes with some kind of lifetime achievement in athletics, and presented them to the current student body as role models. Obviously administrations change over time but how far from the respected academic standards of my day could they come?
I should write them a letter asking them if they rehired that teacher.
I went to see my hard drives today and was happy to actually spot one. I don’t remember when I first did this but maybe a year or so ago I dumped 3 or 4 old hard drives into the East River, and would check in on them once in a while to see how far they washed out to sea, or not. They stayed surprisingly in place for a long time. Last time I went (a few weeks ago, I think) I saw no trace of them but the tide was a bit higher than today, making them invisible. The hard drive I saw today looked sufficiently broken down to where I can’t imagine anyone could retrieve data from it, not that I was ever worried about that. I think these drives all had nothing but classical piano music on them.
A bunch of abandoned cars I used to look for on an obscure Astoria side street are all gone now save for one SUV with a CMD license plate. I never reported them to 311 so either somebody else did or the underground ersatz chop shop dudes moved them to a new location. One car I did report to 311 was eventually removed, though it was months after I reported it and I have no way to know if my 311 call was the impetus for its removal.
If I never fully understand what that whole abandoned car scene was about it would be fine by me. I’m always a little stung any time I think about it, though. It’s a small thing, I guess, but my enthusiasm for the matter stemmed mostly from the interest expressed by a local newspaper editor in covering the story. He was saying we’d have an ongoing dialogue of interesting hyperlocal story ideas but after the initial contacts he has completely ignored me. He did write a decent story about my Godfather at Calvary web pages, so that’s something, but still kind of a bummer that that was the end of the correspondence.
In the spirit of 311 calls I was amused today to see responses to data set requests I made at the NYC open data web site. I made those requests YEARS ago and they are only now being forwarded to the appropriate individuals.
